The office of Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Col. Steven McCraw reports that human traffickers have been pushing large numbers of undocumented immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border in targeted locations to distract the Border Patrol with the lengthy process of detaining excessive numbers of immigrants.
At the same time, cartels are more easily smuggling drugs, clients and, most notably, victims of human trafficking into Texas through areas temporarily left without security, and then sneak profits back the same way, a McCraw spokesperson noted.
Texas DPS Deputy Administrator for Media and Communications Rachael Pierce says the department is committed to securing the border under the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott.
“Since Operation Lone Star began in March, DPS has deployed around 1,000 troopers to assist at the border,” Pierce told Lone Star Standard. “While the department does not discuss operational specifics, we continue to monitor the situation as it unfolds in order to make real-time decisions and will adjust operations as necessary.”
Pierce said that DPS troopers “continue to enforce all state violations of law,” including but not limited to criminal trespassing, criminal mischief, smuggling and human trafficking. They have been kept busy, she said, providing figures through July 22.
“During Operation Lone Star, DPS has made more than 3,400 criminal arrests and more than 53,300 migrant apprehensions and referrals,” Pierce said. “There have been 546 vehicle pursuits, and DPS has seized more than 4,800 pounds of cocaine and methamphetamine, 936 firearms and more than $7.8 million dollars in the areas of the Rio Grande Valley, Del Rio, Big Bend and El Paso.”
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) apprehended nearly 189,000 undocumented immigrants at the southwest border in the month of June alone. This marks a 5% increase in apprehension since May, and is the highest number of apprehensions in a single month in the last 10 years.
The Center for Immigration Studies reports that more than 10,400 undocumented immigrants were determined to be inadmissible at the southern border in the month of June alone. This is a 150% increase for rates of inadmissible immigrants since March and a 30% increase since May
In a recent briefing, Brooks County Sheriff Urbino Martinez outlined how a growing number of farmers and ranchers in his county near the southern border have found the dead bodies of women and children. Martinez said that they were likely abandoned by smugglers.
According to longtime Republican Party strategist Karl Rove in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, since Abbott’s order to intensify border patrols in March, the Texas DPS has made 1,800 arrests for human trafficking, as well as other crimes such as drug smuggling.
Furthermore, the DPS has apprehended more than 45,000 undocumented immigrants, many of whom are members of Mexican cartels and gangs. The Texas legal system has convicted 19 of these immigrants of sex crimes and subsequently deported them.
Rove juxtaposed two viewpoints regarding the border crisis. On a June 25 visit to El Paso, Vice President Kamala Harris stated that “we have seen extreme progress over these last few months.”
On June 30, Abbott said “the Biden administration is completely failing” in their attempt to correct the border crisis. Addressing this disagreement, Kelly Hancock, chairman of the Texas Senate Veterans Affairs and Border Security Committee, concluded that, “Facts say the governor is right and make it difficult to figure out Ms. Harris’ definition of ‘extreme progress.’”
According to a June poll conducted by the Washington Post/ABC, 51% of Americans disapprove of President Biden’s handling of “the immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border,” whereas only 33% approve of his actions.
According to a 2016 report from the University of Texas at Austin, there are 78,996 minor and youth victims of human trafficking and 234,457 victims of labor trafficking in Texas at any given time, totaling 313,453 victims of human trafficking.
A recent Pew study revealed that more than two-thirds (68%) of Americans think the current administration is doing a “bad job” at dealing with the border crisis and 79% of respondents believe it is very or somewhat important to reduce the number of asylum seekers at the U.S. border.
Along with a spike in illegal immigration, the border crisis has brought with it an increase in other crimes related to cartel criminal enterprise. The West RGV News reported earlier this year that generational South Texas rancher Whit Jones III noted that immediately following the Biden administration's rollback of Trump-era policies, he has seen a “significant increase” of human trafficking and smuggling.
Critics of those Trump policies considered them inhumane and ineffective.
According to Reuters, many cartels in Mexico that previously stole oil and sold drugs are shifting to a new line of work — human trafficking. Mexico is an origin, transit and destination country for the sex-trafficking industry, and has recently seen an uptick in gangs shifting to dealing in people.
Cartels that have shifted to the human-trafficking industry include the oil-pipeline tapping and Guanajuato-based Santa Rosa de Lima gang, as well as the Mexico City Tepito Union drug gang.
Fox News recently reported that Mexican cartels make as much as $14 million a day smuggling individuals across the border and into the United States. Retired Tucson Border Patrol Chief Roy Villareal recently said that trafficked individuals become slaves to pay to be smuggled across the U.S. border.
“A lot of these vulnerable populations use their life savings," he said. "Some are essentially indentured servants and they’re working off this debt for a long period of time. In other cases, some of these migrants are asked to transport narcotics or some form of crime to work off a different part of their debt.”
Santiago Nieto, head of Mexico’s financial intelligence unit, is deeply involved in the investigation and arrest of cartel members. He recently noted that many gangs are shifting to sex trafficking as their predominant source of revenue.
“A lot of criminal groups are mutating,” Nieto said. “When one possibility ends, they start to link up with other kinds of criminal activities.”
He estimates that trafficking has become the third-largest illicit activity in Mexico behind drug and arms dealing.
